Carillon
by paradocent
Summary: A century before the fall, Virgon's royal family faces an uncertain future as the flame passes from one generation to the next.
1. Chapter 1

" _In a real sense, Virgon ceased to be an empire the moment that it granted home-rule to Picon. Such a moment of crisis should have broken loose political reform, as it had a century sooner on Canceron. But although the Claire Palace and its court had lost their grasp on other worlds, they retained an iron grip on Virgon itself. Before reform came, Virgon would have to endure four centuries of declining prestige and political influence; it would have to endure the indignity of being culturally and economically eclipsed by its former vassals and rival, and above all by Caprica; it would have to lose its last beachheads in Helios Beta and see its control of Erebos and the moons of Zeus erode. It would have to endure first stasis, then depression, and, ultimately, rot. In a complex, densely-reticulated system, moments when every cog and sinew align to allow for sudden movement are rare and fleeting. Only with the Pican secession and the Ricardian succession would the dam break._ " –From Bentinck's _Fall and Subsequent Decline of the Virgan Empire_ (1906).

 **CARILLON**

A _Racetrack Chronicles_ one-shot

Simon J. Dodd

 _Near the coast of Kearvaig, Virgon.  
_ _1,873 A.E.  
_ _127 years before the Fall._

"Control, SAR-3; we have them in—"

"Watch the crosscurrent, Rick!" Cady yelled to be heard over the wind.

"I'm on it, I've got—whoa!" The coast-guard helicopter leapt twenty feet from the updraft, its computer struggling to keep the spotlights targeted on a fishing-boat foundering below.

"Fra—!" Cady lost her grip and pitched forward through the hatch, her harness yanking her back, breathless.

"I've got it, I've got it..." Rick flipped off the master-alarm's hooted warning that they had been pushed out of trajectory, swearing under his breath; "tell me something I don't know."

"Beautiful night for a walk," Cady shouted with a grin, unwinding the winch and dropping its line toward the pitching sea.

He grimaced and worked them closer; Cady reeled in the line and it came back up with two of the fishermen clinging to it for dear life. They landed in the cabin, coughing up water.

"I don't see the last one… Wait, I've got him. Frak, he's face-down in the water." She swore a string of curses that would make a merchant marine sailor blush. "Paint his vest as the target for the lamps and work us forward ten meters, down another ten!"

"In these conditions, that's awful close to the hard-deck!"

"Well, then don't frak it up!"

" _There's_ a new motto for the family crest!" Even over the wind, he heard a horribly-familiar sound and risked a glance backward; "you—did you just _untether?!_ "

"If he can't grab the collar," she hooked her harness to it, "I'll just have to grab _him_ , the inconsiderate bastard. Like I said—" she shook the line; "beautiful night for a walk!"

"Overcast, chance of drowning, huh?"

"Just be ready to pull me back up when I say!" She swan-dived out of the hatch, and the shortcoming of "when I say" became instantly apparent as the water killed her com.

 _Manual judgment it is, then_ ; even with the lamps at maximum, it was hard to make out what was happening, but as soon as it looked like the yellow fluorescent blob had wrapped around the orange fluorescent blob, he increased power to the engine, gently at first, then faster, gaining altitude with Cady and the third fisherman trailing behind on the tether. He toggled the winch-retract once they had enough height that the gusts no longer threatened to steal control from him, and after a few more moments, Cady was back in the cabin with the unconscious man and had slammed the hatch behind her.

"Thanks for the ride, mister!" she grinned, reviving the man. "Go team."

"Go team rescue. You're crazy." Rick hauled them onto a course for home. "Let's never do that again."

"Hey, you don't get to boss me around." She flopped down next to him, buckled in, and shot him a sideways glance. "Not yet."

 _The Claire Palace, Molesham, Virgon.  
_ _1,892 A.E.  
_ _108 years before the Fall._

The vote in Picon's Assembly-General was not unexpected, but someone had to break the news to Stephen XVI, the Emperor of Virgon. The _last_ emperor, it was to turn out. He was barely into his sixties, but a heart defect and a recent fight with lung cancer had left him frail, and even at his peak he hadn't dealt well with bad news. The consensus at court was that one of his children should do it, and Richard, the heir-apparent, was both on-hand and willing.

"Well?" Stephen's tone was brusque even before Richard had taken his hands from the doorhandles.

"The vote is in. They're breaking ties with us."

"Yes. I've heard." He raised his voice for the benefit of any courtiers who might be listening in: "They all think we hear _nothing except what they tell us!_ But we _do hear things!_ " He receded to a mutter. "I hear everything."

Richard clasped his hands behind his back and shifted his balance. He had his own reasons for going along with the court's invitation to be yelled at. "And how is that sitting with you?"

Stephen shrugged, his face somewhere between angry and weary. "What will they do? Fabricate a king of their own? A queen? Or"—he couldn't keep the distaste out of his voice—"it's to be a republic, I suppose?"

"I don't know. There's to be another vote on that. The latter, I suspect."

"Fools. They don't know what they're throwing away." A bitter snort. "Literally don't even know what they're throwing it away _for_."

Richard was grateful that his father at least wasn't beating the war-drums; had he tried, they would have crumbled. Virgon's glory-days were long past. "It has, to be fair, been a long time since the crown was at all interventionist in Pican politics. Day-to-day—"

"The point of monarchy isn't to intervene, it's to _stabilize_. We're a keel. We keep things stable, and even."

The _gall_ of that claim from a man who autocratically and (more than perhaps any emperor in a century) _immediately_ ruled five billion people! But Richard had learned to choose his battles. Today, he had a slightly different one in mind. He cleared his throat; "stability, though, can ossify into rigidity. Father, this is—

" _This_ again?! Richard! We have _talked_ about this, _over and again_ —"

"—it's an _opportunity_. It's the moment to make changes at home. We have to do it, and this is an ideal pretext."

"Hardly. This is precisely the moment to stand firm, young one."

 _Young one_ ; Richard was 40 and bridled at the condescension. "To change course under pressure from protest or insurrection… I understand your point. But we can't ignore events! Or, worse yet, dig in our heels, determining that we will adhere to the status quo at all costs, lest we _seem_ to be retreating under fire. I understand the _optics_. But—"

"To do as you propose, especially now—" Stephen waved a hand dismissively. "It'll seem like capitulation. We would put blood in the water. Show the twelve worlds we can be forced to surrender under political pressure. Constancy! We have promised to be steadfast! If _ever_ there is a moment to change, this is very far from it. Doing so would—at _best_ , it would subvert if not invite destruction of the emperor's authority."

"'The emperor'..." Richard shook his head. "Face facts, father! We haven't been an empire in centuries, and if we retained the facade of one yesterday, today it's gone. _Every_ other monarchy in the colonies has fallen. Every one. We can change; we _have_ to change, or we'll die."

" _I swore_ an oath!" It was the closest to a yell that Stephen could manage with one lung. "The same oath you will swear in good time! We are to preserve the heritage bequeathed to us, not dally with your half-baked, crypto-schoolbook theorizing!"

Richard bit his lip and kept his voice even. "Sometimes preservation requires change."

"Well, when you're emperor, when I've gone to the gods, try it," Stephen spat, still red-faced and breathless. "Let me know how that works out for you."

Richard looked at the floor, swallowed, and gave way. He chuckled to himself quietly and smiled. There would be another chance. Another time. Another day to try changing his mind.

There would not, however, be _many_ more days. By the end of the month, Stephen XVI would suffer a stroke, and scant weeks after that, he died in his sleep, having nodded off as his youngest daughter pushed his wheelchair through the palace gardens under a gorgeous summer sunset.

§

Richard absent-mindedly pulled a candy from his desk drawer and flicked it into his mouth; it was his only vice, he would tell anyone who would listen. A cigarette smoldered in an ash-tray on the desk; that, too, was his only vice, he would tell anyone who would listen.

Technically, he had been His Royal Highness Prince Richard Granish-Furnival-Mercia, 42nd Archduke of Hibernia, seventeenth Earl of Hadrian, Marquess-in-Abeyance of Pallas, Margrave of the Jovian Possessions, and Heir to the Thæic Throne. In this brief interregnum, a yet-more convoluted titled had descended upon him. He missed the days when he had been simply Lieutenant Rick Granish of His Majesty's Imperial Virgan Coastguard; people spoke plainly to you in the military. Honestly. Directly. In a few days, he would be crowned Richard IX, and having ascended to the throne, he feared that no one would ever be direct with him again. _The throne of Virgon_. Its name came from an ancient Sæsoneg word for thatch, and the literal throne itself was literally made of thatching in a preposterous affectation of feigned modesty. It had already been ancient a thousand years ago when his predecessors had declared Virgon an empire. At its peak, that empire had ruled not only Virgon itself and its moon Hibernia, but Picon, Pallas, the Erebos belt, and the moons of Zeus, and it had briefly "taken wardship" of (ruled) Tauron and its moon Minos. That had been a mistake. After less than a century, in 1,150 A.E., guerilla fighters had forced Virgon's flag from Tauron, only for Leonis to swoop in. After a century-long cold(ish) war, Leonis, too, would be driven off of Tauron, at the cost of their monarchy, which fell in the first of several convulsive revolutions that began in 1,274. Centuries of inward focus would follow. Not that Virgon long profited from its rival's collapse; at once exhausted and decadent, a slow decline had set in. Picon would regain home-rule in 1,453, albeit subject to the Virgan crown and aristocracy. Now they had fled the coop, and, frankly, who could blame them?

His present office was in the part of the palace that courtiers called, without a whit of irony, the "new" section, even though it was completed two centuries before the oldest of them had been born. Just as his titles and styles had changed the instant that Stephen XVI had died, so also the physical office proper to him; the court had a _proper_ procedure and tradition for everything from interregna down to unclogging the toilet. He marveled that the Claire Palace must be the only place in the twelve worlds more suffocatingly-airless than the vast vacuum of space between them.

There was a tap on the door. "Your eminence?"

 _Eminence_. Such was his current moment; no longer 'your highness,' but not yet 'your majesty.'

"Eminence, the young lady you requested is here."

"Thankyou," he acknowledged.

Cady was ushered in and there was an awkward silence. It had been years, and for a few moments they stared at one another, searching for the proper thing to say. Eventually, he cleared his throat and said "thank you for coming."

"I—well. It's my pleasure, but this _is_ the point at which you can, ehm… Can give me orders, I suppose. _Sire_."

"Hmm. I'm no one's sire yet. Just—" He clicked his tongue. "You used to call me Rick."

"That was different. It was a different time."

"Does it have to be?" He sighed heavily and pointed to a set of doors leading out to the gardens. "It's good to see you." He held a finger to his lips, and she frowned, puzzled; "it's a lovely day outside. Perhaps we can we walk in the gardens?"

"I'm sorry about your father," she offered on the way out.

"Thankyou. You're well, I trust?"

"I am, yes, thankyou. Term just finished, so the faculty's all just kind of decompressing and glad to be done marking tests. So it's a good time." She froze. "Gods, I'm sorry; that was an awful thing to say. Sorry. Not a good time at all. I mean—"

"You're fine. I've missed that. People who just say what they're thinking. He wasn't a young man."

"Even so. I'm sure you miss him."

They had walked across the southeast parterre and were strolling toward the reflecting pond. 'Lovely' was overstating the day, but not by much; 'impressive' would have understated Cady's impression of the place. Fifty miles upriver of Boskirk, the royal estate sprawled over some 800 acres, bounded by ponds and avenues that radiated out from the palace's southeast face like spokes, cutting the park into four roughly triangular sections of a larger rough triangle with the palace at its apex. At the far end of the largest pond, which ran from the parterre down the larger triangle's median, there was some kind of statuary, but even at its heroic scale, she couldn't make out the figures from a half-mile away.

"The statue?" He caught her eyeline. "'Patron and Founders.' Hestia handing the crown to Ælfred Corrinus as David I watches. After the, ehm, old line went extinct and the dynasties changed, my ancestors were keen to show they belonged on the throne. So, ah... Art, among other things. Lots of it."

"Interesting to put it so far away, then."

"Well, it used to be in the main courtyard. Mary III redesigned the grounds; she had something of an eye for that sort of thing, supposedly. Or a passion, anyway. She didn't like statuary, so it was moved."

"I see." Her voice hardened slightly. "What are we doing here, Rick?"

"Inside, I'm worried the walls have ears."

"No, I mean—I'm sorry, I misspoke. What am _I_ doing here?"

He smiled. "Do you know the difference between a palace and a prison?"

"More cake, fewer bars?"

"Hmn. In a prison, there's no confusion as to who is the warden and who is the inmate." He sighed. "My late father was determined that business must keep running as it always has. The court certainly feels that way. I doubt that it can. I want to do something about it, but there are certain… _Challenges_."

"Ehm… Alright, I'll play along. So you'd want to do… What?"

"Well, I think that a good first step would be to be crowned simply as _King_ of Virgon. Enough of this sterile pretense that we are still what we once were. And then lay out steps toward real reform. Bolster the civil organs—transfer day-to-day power to elected officials. It has to be a _constitutional_ monarchy or it'll end in a republic. You've studied this, you've taught this, you know the theory."

"Rick, I'm a teacher. Sometimes I write books. That's all. You're talking about—that's really above my pay-grade."

"Is it? I've read your books. And besides, you're not blind. I'm sure you read the papers. If the throne doesn't bend, it _will_ break. Just like it did on Leonis. On Gemenon. On Scorpia. They're all gone; monarchy is fading into history. _My_ task…" He stopped, and chided himself; _you're lecturing. Stop with the formal tone and just say what's on your mind_. "Cady, I'm here now, in this moment, and it can't be coincidence. I think the gods have a plan. I feel I'm supposed to preserve the best parts of the monarchy. The worthwhile bits. For the future, I mean. And maybe I'm stupid, but I only see one way to do that, and that's to separate the throne from the political fray. I want to convene a parliament, and I want them to meet for regular sessions; maybe even continuously. I can name my Prime Minister from that parliament and let him—ehm, or her—pursue policy more freely, rather than as a vassal to myself. The government can work in my name without involving me in every detail. You see? Not drastic changes, just small changes with large effects."

She was staring at him dubiously. "That's all very nice, but I doubt your court's going to think so. You are, well, playing with fire."

He smiled internally; sometimes the formal tone had its uses, and he summoned all the pomp and circumstance that he could muster. "The _fire_ is already burning. _We_ must tamp it down."

"'We'?" She frowned at him. "The _royal_ 'we,' or—you still haven't answered my question. I mean, not that I don't appreciate getting to hang out with an old friend in his admittedly-modest home."

He chuckled and glanced back toward the palace. "Yeah. It's a bit much, isn't it?"

"Just a bit."

"I need… Counsel. And a confidant. Someone I can trust who's outside of all this"—he waved a hand in the air in the direction of the palace. "Giving power to Boskirk drains it from this place. And most people maybe think that the person who sits on the throne is the powerful one, maybe even _you_ think so, but I've seen first-hand how that really works. It means draining power from the court. They won't cede it without a fight. I need someone I can lean on, someone to be my backbone, someone who can give me… Perspective."

"But—"

"Cady… I don't have many friends. That goes with the territory. And what's about to happen? After the coronation, the court's going to become my whole life, my whole world. I'll never escape. And I'm anxious; there's a lot at stake and maybe not much time. A downturn in the economy, a political crisis, just a shift in public mood. The throne's more rickety and fragile by the year. You were fearless, back in the day. I need that. I trust you and I think you know what you're talking about; like I said, I read your books. And you'll just come out and say things. I think you can keep me honest."

"So you're, what, you're offering me a job? Counselor or something?"

"Actually, I was thinking queen-consort."

She guffawed. "Good one."

He let her laugh for a few moments. "I'm serious. It's perfect; it would give you unlimited access."

"You're—Rick, unless I'm forgetting something, you prefer men."

"And if this were Caprica or any of nine other colonies, that would be fine. If I were just some shopkeep or talk-show host, no one would care, not really. But I'm to be king. Emperor if I can't avoid it. And Virgon isn't ready for that."

"You shouldn't have to tear off part of who you are. That's insane."

"The crown comes at a personal cost." He shrugged; the formal tone again: "I will do what is necessary for my people."

She scoffed and thought for a moment. "So, this isn't actually the craziest marriage proposal I've ever had, funny story, but… No. Look, I'm not going to do that. You're an idiot. And besides, you don't need me for that."

He looked crestfallen. "I know, but I had thought—"

"Rick— _Sire_. Look, I'll certainly help you."

"Oh?"

"I mean, I'm not going to marry you. Idiot. I really hope your other ideas are better than _that_ one. But I'll help. I appreciate what you're trying to do."

He looked back toward the palace. "Alright. Counselor, then."

"Alright. Go team." She relaxed a little, and giggled at the absurdity of the moment, glancing around the splendor of the gardens and the ancient palace. A few hours ago, her life had been the routine, predictable rhythm of the university year; suddenly, in a few minutes under the midday sun of late summer, her life had changed, slipping into a new phase, and she had no idea what it held. "Go team Virgon."

He snorted. "It was a lot simpler when we were younger, wasn't it?"

"Why'd you join the coastguard, Rick? I know it's expected that the heir will serve, but you could have served in any branch. Could have flown planes, could have ridden ships. Could have fired _really big guns_. Could have had a lot more fun."

"I don't know, really. I suppose I felt like I was helping people. Like I was making a difference. I wanted to do that."

"Hmn. That," she patted his arm, "that seems like a good instinct for a king to have."

 _Dedicated to Richard Hatch  
_ _1945-2017  
_ _Requiescat in pace_


	2. Appendix 1

**Appendix 1**

Author's introduction to Bentinck's _The Rise of Virgon_ (19,01 A.E.)

Half a million humans from all twelve nations fled the last days of Kobol, crammed aboard 213 ships. The voyage took seven weeks. The gods themselves had anointed their destination, rumor held; Apollo had provided a map, some said, others Zeus, but no one was sure. Few cared. They had _survived_ —and that was what counted. The remnant of humanity huddled together and mostly did the only thing that they could: Endure.

When they reached Helios Alpha, the closest system in Cyrannus' double-binary, they found its outer bounds patrolled by a titanic gas-giant that the colonists would name Zeus, honoring the Lord of Lords. Its two largest moons were habitable, barely, and some of the kobollian ships—their crews and passengers exhausted—paused to rest. But most of the ships pressed on down the gravity-well. The next planet that they passed was, in standard notation, Helios Alpha IV. It was not considered a serious candidate for colonization. At the ragged edge of the star's habitable zone, only its tropics were marginally fit for humans, a cold but tolerable climate like that of Aquaria today.

Farther in, they found more promising worlds. One planet was much like Kobol, but of somewhat more extreme weather, orbiting in a binary pair with another, identically-sized, but with an unbreathable atmosphere; a third, closer to the star and so hotter than Kobol, but viable. Any hopes of retaining pan-national unity had died on the voyage with Stephen Acastus, the last President of Kobol. Tension and exhaustion prevailed: Each nation chose leaders of their own, and two strongest nations, Gemini and Pisces, claimed the two desirable planets, proclaiming them to be the Colonies of Gemenei and Piscon.

The ships from Scorpio, Sagittarius, Cancer, Aries, Taurus, and Leo pressed on to seek worlds of their own around Cyrannus' three remaining stars. The ships from Capricorn, Libra, and Aquarius divided, and their nations began to fragment. Most chose to become wards of stronger nations; many remained on Gemenei. Perhaps its neighbor-world could, in time, be tamed? Could become a home? The world was undeniably beautiful; it had potential. There had been talk of "kobolforming" planets, and Helios Alpha III(b) had water-oceans and oxygen; if some of the atmosphere's carbon dioxide could be converted or bled, reducing the temperature and pressure at sea level… Consensus held that it was possible. It would just take a very long time. This was a remarkably far-sighted call on their part. It would be a millennium—after the Libranese disapora had re-coalesced having tamed a world in Helios Gamma, even after some of the Aquarion had settled an eleventh colony in Helios Delta—before the project would come to fruition, and Gemenei, by then called Gemenon, would bestow on its vassal a name honoring the by-then missing twelfth nation of Kobol: Caprica.

But as the story that I shall tell in this volume begins, such things lay far in the future. Twelve nations had arrived in Cyrannus. Two had settled in Helios Alpha; six had settled worlds in Beta, Gamma, and Delta; three had fragmented into diasporas. The last nation, Virgo, had paused at the gates. Their ships, joined by almost one third of the Aquarions, had rested on Zeus' largest moon. They named it Nike in honor of the Demigod raised to the pantheon from their nation. They watched from the jovian shadows as the other nations bickered and fought over who should get what.

The Colonists had brought with them from Kobol an ancient instrument of government, the Quorum of Twelve. Over the months that followed arrival—some wag would call it "the great sort," as Cyrannus was carved-up by the nations—Virgo's leader, Archon Ælfred Corrinus, would sit in the quorum wondering how it was that everyone else could be so _stupid_. He listened to the delegates from the other nations mouth empty praises to the gods and read tea-leaves for signs, bickering amongst themselves over who should get what planet. He listened to sabre-rattling threats and delegates attempting (so it would seem) to bore one another to death. And wondered… _how can everyone be so stupid?!_ There was consensus that it was a sign from the gods that Helios Alpha, incredibly, contained three planets with gravity and rotational periods almost identical to Kobol's. But what difference, Corrinus wondered, did the rotational period make? Who cared how long a day lasted? Surely what counted was the _gravity_? And there were _four_ planets in Helios Alpha that had that. No one, after all, excluded Helios Alpha III(b) from the miraculousness of it all, saying "oh, it must be a sign from the gods if this one has a toxic atmosphere." Why, then, should they discount Helios Alpha IV, with its breathable atmosphere and near-ideal gravity, simply because it had a 31-hour day?

Thus, the nation of Virgo, while retaining a settlement on Nike, and joined by a significant part of what had once been the nation of Aquarius, chose to settle Helios Alpha IV. They founded towns on the equatorial belt: Amesbury and Thatcham, Boskirk, soon Hadrian, and so on. With the nations of Capricorn, Libra, and Aquarius dispersed, the Quorum of Twelve became vestigial; it continued to meet, sporadically, but _nations_ were now less meaningful than _colonies_ , and the practical instrument of intercolonial diplomacy in the first millennium after the exodus became the Intercolonial Congress, in which would meet nine colonies: Gemenei, Piscon, Taurun, Leon, Canceron, Aerelon, Scorpion, Sagittarius… And Virgon.

No one was under any illusions: This generation of Virgans and several to come would be taking the hit for their descendants. Long-term, the colony's prosperity would require Kobolforming even more extreme than what people were talking about for the world that would eventually become Caprica. Not uniquely, Virgon had chosen monarchy as well-suited to their situation, and for several centuries, under the careful and meticulous guidance of the Corrino dynasty, Virgon pursued a policy of being the hub of heavy industry in the colonies, focusing on carbon-intensive processes to boost the planet's temperature. Some measures were more spectacular: In one of the riskiest, an asteroid was deorbited and crashed into the most remote part of the planet, trading a long winter for a degree and a half of heat. It would be a long road, but by 600AE, Virgon's average temperature had increased five degrees and the biosphere was stable. The project had opened much of the planet's land surface to human habitation, and the concentration on industry had made Virgon wealthy.

In the three centuries that followed, Virgon would, with increasing sophistication and confidence, take full control of its own moon, Hibernia, and of the moons of Zeus, and would assert its control and sovereignty over the Erebos asteroid belt. (A small subset of the nation of Capricorn, calling themselves Cel'tans—in their native language, "dray'co"—had settled Hibernia, and Virgan policy regarding the by-then-natives would fluctuate over the centuries.) Neither Gemenon nor Picon were in a position to object, and it would be centuries before there would be a Caprica with which to compete. And when Picon descended into civil war between its Great Houses of Anthony and Jorvik, Virgon would intervene militarily "on humanitarian grounds," taking control of the planet. Queen Annabeth Corrino-Hart married the scion of Picon's House Granish, proclaiming Virgon an empire, and herself Empress. The Corrino-Hart-Granish dynasty would rule much of Helios Alpha for the next century with little controversy or competition.

This period, lasting from approximately 900 AE to 11,00 A.E., constitutes the Golden Age of Virgon. The dominant power in Helios Alpha, challenged only by Leonis for eminence in the αβ pair, it was a rich, politically-stable colony, a powerhouse of technological innovation, cultural influence, and military might. That was fortunate, for in 1032, the Emperor Robert II died childless, the 45th and last descendent of Ælfred Corrinus to sit on the throne, and the Corrino line became extinct. The court swiftly married a cousin from the Granish side to Baroness Furnival, enthroning the emperor David I and establishing the Royal House of Granish-Furnival. Incumbents might come and go; but the throne is eternal. And the court, then as now, is immortal—and omnipotent. The new line would take, and first David then Robert III (cannily-chosen regnal names) would prove popular, sagacious emperors. But Robert IV had a reach that exceeded his grasp. It was he who would attempt, with fatal success, to extend the empire beyond Helios Alpha.

Here we must pause to discuss developments in Helios Beta. The nations of Leo and Taurus had settled two planets, each comfortably within the star's habitable zone. Each had proved ideal for agriculture, and mineral resources were within easy reach of either. An equilibrium had developed: Each mined the Ouranos belt, and although the colony by now called Leonis was stronger, it was focused on exploiting Troy, as Helios Beta I had been dubbed. Neither was much interested in Pallas, a dead world between the orbits of Tauron and the gas-giant Hera. There is no accounting for the desire to conquer worlds; some men simply survey their domains and want more. Thus, the Thæic Emperor of Virgon Robert IV saw the opportunity for a beachhead in Helios Beta, and so Virgon reached out and took Pallas. Thence, Virgon stripped Hera's moons from Tauron's nominal control, despite a storm of diplomatic protest from Leonis. The Intercolonial Congress impotently condemned the move as disruptive to the balance of power—which was, we might reasonable suspect, Robert's intention.

Only when Virgon annexed Tauron itself and its moon Minos in 10,66 did war become a real threat. Leonan fury was all the more intense and capable of being carried into execution because Celestine VIII, the King of Leonis, had himself intended to seize their neighbor, mostly as a bulwark against Virgon, but partly because he, too, wanted to be an emperor. The Virgans, for their part, did not expect resistance. After all, Picon had proved a peaceful vassal. Yet for almost a century, Virgon struggled to hold its new possession against a fierce guerilla campaign. At last, in 11,50, the royal court bowed to reality and Virgon withdrew its forces to first Minos and then Pallas. Soon after, Leonis—once the sponsor of the resistance—swooped in to occupy Tauron. It would fare little better, and they, too, would soon be forced offworld at shattering cost.

So ended Virgon's golden age; so began the end for an empire that had once dominated colonial affairs, which summited (and in a real sense began a slow decline) the moment that it occupied Tauron—a decline that has only now, arguably, been arrested. But the fall and decline of the Virgan empire is a long story of its own, perhaps, best treated in a separate volume. (I hope, but I dare not presume to assure, since it would require many years of work, that should the present volume prove popular, I will be able to tell that story also.) For now, let us now explain in more detail the history sketched in broad strokes above.

 _-Dowling Street, Boskirk, VI; March 1, 1901._


End file.
